Cameroon Mining Industry: Sundance Share Price Rises
Yaounde, Cameroon Africa. (Cameroon News) – The share prices of Sundance Resources were increased by 9.3 pc as the presence of ore was confirmed in its Mbalam Project.
SUNDANCE RESOURCES’S proposal to export iron ore from West Africa has got itself a tremendous thrust in the positive direction as information has been obtained building confidence in the quality of mineral deposits at its Mbalam iron ore project.
The Australian mining company, Sundance Resources (SDL.AX: Quote) announced on Thursday that the latest discovery at its Mbalam iron ore project in Cameroon indicates that there is almost double the amount of resources than what had been announced previously. Indicated findings give the miner who is more or less focused on projects in West Africa, increase of confidence in the potential of iron ore to be exploited in the regions.
Cameroon Diamond Mining Industry -
The results of the drilling that were announced in the recent past at the site have indicated a tremendous increase in the amount of ore ranked as ”indicated”, a data that provides more certain proof about the presence of the ore that has the inherent scope to be exploited.
The project – which runs all along the border of Cameroon and the Republic of Congo, was found to have an estimated 169 million tonnes of high-quality hematite classified as ”indicated” when exploration was done previously. Yesterday the company announced that the amount had increase to 417.7 million tonnes.
Sundance pointed out the fact that the indicated high-grade hematite had more than doubled to 417.7 metric tonnes, after a major drilling project was undertaken in the past one year in comparison with 169 MT previously determined.
The news saw some immediate responses from the stock market. On what was a dubious day for mining stocks pertaining to iron ore, the market retaliated to the announcement with great elan, lifting the share price by 4¢, to 47¢. News of the discovery has pushed up Sundance shares by9.3 percent in just a course of a single day.
The results of the drilling have come in before even a year has been completed after six Sundance board members lost their lives in a major plane crash.
Its chief executive, Giulio Casello, said the responses of the stock markets to the results evoke a better confidence in the feasibility of the West African project. ”We are now approaching half a billion tonnes of high-quality iron resources, and 85 per cent of that is now ‘indicated,’ ” he said.
“This resource estimate further strengthens our confidence of the viability of this project. We are now approaching half a billion tonnes of high quality iron resources and 85 per cent of that is now indicated,” Sundance Chief Executive Giulio Casello said in the press release.
“We have a globally significant project capable of producing 35 million tonnes per annum of high-quality iron ore for at least 25 years,” he said.
Casello said the first phase of the project also proposes to build a railway line and deep sea port that aims at interconnecting the mine to the port so as to ensure that there are no hurdles to smooth transportation of the resources to the final destination. The company last year had to postpone the start-up of production to 2013.
The company had also announced in February the estimated $3.4 billion cost of the project was going beyond the budgeted costs.
Sundance said that the talks that it has been undertaking with potential debt and equity partners for the project were also indicating positive results and a definitive feasibility study into the project is to be started before the end of the month.
Sundance said last month that it was expecting that a ratio of 70 per cent debt and 30 per cent equity could be a ”reasonable” result for the project.
